


Fuck Them, We Write Our Own Endings

by pathsofpassion



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode Fix-it, M/M, and so are the spn writers, so we do it ourselves, spoilers for 15x20, the empty is a spiteful bitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27639845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pathsofpassion/pseuds/pathsofpassion
Summary: Fixit for 15x20. Because that was bullshit.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 1
Kudos: 55





	Fuck Them, We Write Our Own Endings

Defeat God, save the world, get back the friends and family who should never have been lost in the first place.

(almost all of them)

But it feels so –

Yeah, he can't think _that_ word. It's an echo in the back of his mind, harsh and unforgiving. _Empty, empty, empty, empty_.

An eternity of nothing.

_God_. Cas deserved better. Cas deserved better than Dean has ever, ever been able to give him, but more than anything he deserved better than _that_.

He knows Sam is watching him from the doorway, knows that he's been cleaning this one spot on the counter for too long, but he can't stop. If he's done cleaning the kitchen (and the library and the garage and Baby and the shower and his room and the room he'd set aside so long ago for someone who never is going to get the chance to move in), then. Dean doesn't know what else there is for him to do.

What else he _can_ do.

This is horribly familiar; it's not the first time he's lost Cas for good. And yeah, he could get the Jim Beam out and try to drown the ache in his chest like he has every time before, but it's never worked, so why the fuck would it now.

Or maybe he's growing up, and knows that when the bottle's empty, you still have to stand up and keep living.

"Don't make any deals while I'm gone," Sam says, and they can say shit like that now and it's almost funny; he and Sam, at least, have finally – _finally_ – dealt with all of their bullshit. They're. They're good, now.

Dean snorts, looks over his shoulder. "Try not to drive into a ditch."

The face Sam makes at him will never stop being funny, even when Dean's insides are all one solid ache. He jerks his head toward the garage and wonder of wonder, Sam goes without any further argument.

A little guilt, maybe. He's going to meet Eileen, and the parallel couldn't be clearer: Sam got his – his _person_ back.

Dean can't, won't begrudge him that. Had to shove Sam into going, but god – _someone_ should get a little happiness out of this.

Breathing in deeply, he chucks the washcloth into the sink. No one to pretend for now. Pretend like the middle of his chest isn't stripped bare, pretend like he still gives a damn, pretend that the world isn't a shitty consolation prize when the person who made you believe it was _worth it_ won't be coming back.

Jack was clear on that. There is one, just one, place in the universe that God cannot touch, and Cas is locked inside it.

_Fuck_.

The wave of grief slams into him sideways, bowing Dean's back as he braces his palms on the counter. Being familiar doesn't make the agony hurt any less; it's gotten stronger each time, because every time he's lost Cas he's lost _more_. Just an ally, at first, reluctant and alien and barely comprehensible even when Dean felt like he knew that angelic stranger better than his own brother; then a friend, a hunting partner, someone orbiting their tiny, broken little family.

And then. His best friend. His platonic fucking soulmate, by the end, except it hadn't been so platonic after all.

Fuck, no, he doesn't want to – he can't think about that. Can't think about his surety of _years_ , his utter belief that angels couldn't feel things like _that_ , being torn away in the seconds before he lost Cas completely. No time to think, to process, to _respond_ , so he's gotta live with the hell that is knowing Cas never got to hear him answer.

Even if Dean isn't sure, still, what he would have said – what he would say _now_.

_Love_ is a word he has never known how to say.

Feeling it, well. He was so sure that angels couldn't – couldn't do love, the human, messy kind of love, so he'd never had to name the place in his soul where he stored everything that meant _Cas_. Blue eyes and a trenchcoat and hair like he'd been struck by lightning; endless determination to make things _right_.

More faith in Dean Winchester than he has ever deserved.

But he could – if he'd had _time_. If he'd had five more fucking minutes, he could have stuttered out something, even if that something was just _me too_.

They could have had a damn chance. Or if nothing, nothing, _nothing_ else, Cas could have gone knowing that he wasn't alone.

His eyes sting, but no tears fall. They haven't and he knows they won't; he's pretty sure the sobs that tore out of him when Cas was taken are the last he'll ever cry.

God, he's got to – he's got to do something. If he stays holed up in the bunker alone with his grief he'll eat his gun within a week, or try to make a deal. Promises to Sam be damned, there's got to be _one_ demon left in Crossroads that will take his call.

(There isn't. Don't ask how he's sure).

Still. There are places with more reach than Hell, paths they've never dared trod. He could find _something_.

He could.

But it can't end like that. Can't end like _this_ , his tired soul shattered by the kind of loss you don't recover from. Yeah, partly it's because he's learned (finally) what kind of betrayal those deals are to the one you're trying to save.

(If he'd known that thirteen years ago, the world would be a different place; better or worse isn't for him to judge. But if he'd known that thirteen years ago, he'd have never met the only angel worth the name).

Mostly because it's just. He can't let it end like this.

Dean will – he'll do. Something. He'll settle into what he and Sam had always meant to do: a network of hunters, teaching people to work _together_ , to be smart and to focus on _saving people_ instead of _hunting things_. Contacts, communication – he's good at people. He can do that.

Maybe have a place to run it out of, like Ellen did with the Roadhouse, like Bobby did with the salvage yard. A haven, a safe place.

A home. The bunker has seen too much loss and too much horror; it was home, maybe his first real home since he was four years old, but it isn't anymore.

Roadhouse Mark II. He likes it.

He just. Needs to straighten up.

He will, in a minute. The grief won't be leaving any time soon, if ever, but he's had a lifetime to learn how to work through it. And – Cas would have. God, it's the shittiest platitude in the world, but Cas honestly would have wanted him to try. To _live_ , not just exist; to have meaning in his life, instead of just. Wandering around the bunker like a heartbroken ghost.

Even if that's what he feels like.

So any minute now, he's going to straighten up, and start calling people, see who's really left. Who's ready to keep on fighting the fight, because there may not be any more interference from God and Heaven and Hell, but there's still monsters in the world (human and otherwise), and people still need protecting from 'em.

Any minute.

The footstep in the hallway wrenches his every muscle tight; that isn't Sam's tread. Lighter, because the person making it isn't as tall or as broad; quicker, because angelic speed was something Cas kept even with his Grace torn out.

Dean's frozen, hope and terror warring in his chest, and he almost, almost can't force himself to lift his head. To look.

He does, in the end; he always was a sucker for hope. And he had _always_ been able to do for Cas things he would never have managed for himself.

The man in the kitchen doorway is no angel.

It's in the lines of his face, the blue of his eyes – still deep and shockingly blue, but the otherworldly spark is gone. It's in the tired slump of his shoulders and the way he wears his clothes, like they're his and not just the accoutrements of a borrowed body.

It's in the way he watches Dean, except it isn't; that hasn't changed. Cas has never shied away from meeting his eyes and he doesn't now. The pink lips curl up, ever so slightly, and the words echo through Dean's soul because he's heard them a thousand times by now and would have cut off his left arm to hear them again.

"Hello, Dean."

That's supposed to be a call and response, but _"Hey Cas"_ gets lost in his throat. Later, there will be an explanation; the Empty was made for gods and angels and cannot hold someone who made themself human. There was a trek, a journey, a great deal of walking, because the Empty is a spiteful bitch and put Cas on the other side of Kansas when it spit him back out into the world.

Later.

Right now is Dean stumbling across the room, is hot tears on his cheeks as he falls against his angel, hands gripping that damn trenchcoat tight because feeling it means Cas is _real_. Right now is not the time for words; he's figured out his answer and it's the needy press of his mouth to the one he's been craving for _twelve fucking years_.

Time doesn't stop for their kiss, but it might as fucking well have; everything outside of Cas has completely disappeared from his head. All Dean knows is the tight grip of arms around him, the shocked gasp from when he shoved their mouths together, the warmth and _rightness_ of velvet-soft lips on his own.

It's a kiss that was, again, _twelve_ _fucking years_ in the making, and Dean pours every bit of his soul into making sure he gets it _right_.

When he does at last have to lift his head, it's only because they're both human now and they both need air. And he needs to say something, now, in case it wasn't clear – needs to make sure Cas knows what this is, that he _always_ knows, because never again is Dean going to lose his (ex-)angel and regret that the most important words went unsaid.

Gulping past the boulder in his throat, he curves a hand into Cas's jaw; relishes the warmth of his skin and the beat of his pulse, the steady reassurance that Cas is _here_ , that this is _real_.

He hasn't said the words but once in his entire life, but they come out now, croaky and hoarse. "Love you," Dean Winchester says, raw and healing and full of hope.

He closes his eyes, leans his forehead against his angel's, and breathes.

_Now_ it can end. Or just maybe, it can begin.


End file.
